The Role of QA in the DevOps QA has always been seen as a “Enabler” for software deliveries. However, in a DevOps environment, QA is part of the process itself since there are no boundaries between development and operations leading to Agile results unlike a traditional environment where development and operations are separated functions and operations team fixed issues raised by development teams.
In DevOps organizations, QA pushes out new development code to a production environment and DevOps teams provide infrastructure and tools to make the deployment process easier while simultaneously verifying that the changes are functioning as per the requirement.
In a traditional QA focused organizations, quality assurance teams focus on finding bugs while in DevOps organizations, the responsibility of quality assurance is not limited to that but to prevent them from arising in the first place. This approach helps in an environment where there is a need for newer releases every few minutes or hours. Here, manual testing is simply ruled out as an option and test automation has to be deployed.
Normally test Process are based on some steps that following all test levels until product ready for final deployment. Consider those activities that describe below.
a. QA team gets build after it successfully deployed. Here planed test environment is the key factor that influence test. b. Then QA team perform test execution based on pre planed test case or without defined test cases. c. Test execution may be Manual or Automated. d. Functional and Regression testing are main concern.
After QA team meets exit criteria then they stopped testing. Then this build finally goes into the production server.
Now think about DevOps. In DevOps, test scenario is different from traditional test process. As quickly as possible QA transfer fresh development code into the production environment with the collaboration of the DevOps teams. DevOps engineer then provide the necessary support on tools and infrastructure to make it a process that works perfectly, making sure all changes function behaved as expected.
QA team should be focused about quality in software development life-cycle. Testers be part of technical teams. Testers have to consider manual functional and non-functional testing, and should focus on their skills and experiences for apply test automation, and define test strategies.
Testers always think about requirements that must be meet. Testers be focused on every change and their effect on developing products. In order to do this, requirements analysis done by testers. Testers find out test scope. After successfully analysis, quality attributes be well-introduce. Some quality characteristic be pre-defined by organizations or by customers. Requirements need to be specific. QA teams should involve in the requirements process to help and guide development teams. QA teams need to start thinking about how they can utilize their skills to add value as more of their day-to-day work is automated.
Risk based testing also have large benefits. Testers have to do regression testing when major changes that may affect other functions as well. In this scenario automate regression test play very important role by maximum test coverage.
QA teams should play positive attitude and try most effective communication way with teams so their technique can add the value by all possible way in the software development life cycle. As a tester, the following core tasks need to be maintained through the life cycle. a.QA are required to align their efforts in the DevOps cycle. b. They have to make sure that all their test cases are automated and achieve near 100% code coverage. c. They need to make sure that their environments are standardized and the deployment on their QA boxes is automated. d. Test cases that are automated should be perfectly aligned with the Continuous Integration cycle. e. Proper utilization of test automation tools and Continuous Integration tools. f. All their pre-testing tasks, cleanups, post-testing tasks, etc. are automated and aligned with the Continuous Integration cycle.
DevOps encourages everyone to contribute to the chain. So, amongst other things, a dev can configure deployments. Deployment engineers can add test cases to the QA repository. QA Engineers can configure their automation test cases into the DevOps chain.
5 Reasons Why Quality Assurance is Important for DevOps
1. QA PLAYS A STRATEGIC ROLE In the DevOps scenario, testers and developers both play a crucial role, where the peculiarity between the developer and tester's job role gets blurred. QA is built in together with development and operations that enables them to collaborate to build a flawless application or software. QA plays a strategic role in ensuring that quality is taken up as a responsibility by both Development and Operations. So, everyone in the organization takes responsibility to ensure quality and stability, building sustainability. Interestingly, developers end up thinking like a tester and vice versa. In such an environment, if the QA strategy is not thought through then the scope of continuous testing diminishes and the core objectives of speed and quality cannot be met.
2. QA IS A BRIDGE BETWEEN DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATIONS So, Development and Operations collaborate to deliver their expected roles, - but where does QA pitch in? Quality Assurance plays a crucial role in delivering business value, as despite being broken down into silos and delivering their respective roles, quality must be ensured throughout. QA & Testing continues to be a catalyst to accelerate time to market in the DevOps initiatives. DevOps is a step by step approach and to ensure Continuous Delivery and Integration, Quality should be checked at every stage.
3. QA HELPS DETECT BUGS EARLIER In a traditional software development scenario, QA works towards detecting bugs. However, in the DevOps scenario the role of QA goes beyond this. The responsibility of QA matures to preventing the bugs in the first place. This supports in a set-up where there is constant need for fresh releases and that too in few minutes or hours. So, Manual Testing is impossible to be considered here. In the current competitive scenario, for instance, a mobile application that is currently in the market and needs an upgrade, how can this be possible without impacting the user? DevOps makes this possible and QA supports in helping to manage the quality. In this way, QA remains integral to every release in a DevOps set-up.
4. QA AS A "Enabler" FOR SOFTWARE RELEASE QA and Testing has always been the checkpoint for releasing a market ready and robust software/application. Nevertheless, in the DevOps scenario, QA integrates into Development and Operations, resulting in an Agile outcome. This enables continuous development and delivery of applications. For instance, in a DevOps environment, the QA releases fresh code into production, and DevOps teams provide infrastructure and required tools to swiftly deploy the code. This further ensures smooth functioning of the application/software.
5. QA HELPS DELIVER THE OBJECTIVES OF DEVOPS More and more enterprises are embracing DevOps for its intrinsic benefits of continuous delivery and deployment. With this we are consistently advancing towards an age that encourages faster build and testing to meet the demands of the market and the consumers. This intensifies the need for constant quality checks, as flawless quality is rooted within the core ideologies of DevOps approach and cannot be considered separately. QA helps DevOps deliver on its core objectives, so it is an inseparable quotient in the DevOps journey.
DevOps and QA are extremely critical while testing Digital Technologies and developing applications in an environment that needs constant development, delivery, and deployment.
Application Monitoring QA should also be able to detect problems early and report them proactively. To achieve this, they need to set up monitoring on the Production environment to be able to expose bugs before they cause a failure. Setting up specialized counters like response times, memory & CPU utilization, etc. can provide a lot of insight into the end-user experience.